{"id":2531,"date":"2016-06-27T16:46:27","date_gmt":"2016-06-27T20:46:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.musikalessons.com\/blog\/?p=2531"},"modified":"2023-01-25T16:00:24","modified_gmt":"2023-01-25T21:00:24","slug":"listening-to-jazz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.musikalessons.com\/blog\/2016\/06\/listening-to-jazz\/","title":{"rendered":"Listening to Jazz: A Beginner’s Guide"},"content":{"rendered":"

Listening to Jazz Music<\/strong><\/h2>\n

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I have to begin this post with a disclaimer: this article may \u201cruin\u201d listening to music for you. At the very least, it will change the way you listen to music, or at least set you on a path in that \"listeningdirection; but I believe it’s a good direction. When I say it will change the way you listen to music, I mean it will make you listen to music in a way that most people do not. How do you think most people listen to music? This is something I don’t quite understand anymore. Different people grasp on to different things. How do you think people that are tone-deaf or rhythmically-challenged perceive music? Many people grasp on to the lyrics. If you understand the language, you understand the song. This is why a lot of people don’t enjoy listening to jazz or other instrumental music.<\/p>\n

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Music is an aural art. As strange as it sounds, it’s easy to forget that these days. It baffles me when people post comments on a YouTube video asking for the \u201cnotes\u201d or the \u201cTABS\u201d to some easy song that is being played. I guess I have some idea where this comes from. In many methods of teaching, the ability to read music<\/a> is taught to be a very important, if not the most important, part of music. It is important, and the ability to read music well has been good for me in many playing situations, but it’s not the most important part of music. Many styles of music were improvised before the phenomenon of recording came about at the turn of the 20th<\/sup> century. Since recording didn’t exist, improvised music was written down. Today, many people play Bach transcriptions, rather than improvising or realizing the figured bass.<\/p>\n

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Music is a language. In spoken language, which do you think is more important: the ability to read or the ability to communicate?<\/p>\n

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In my own personal experience, since moving to New York, I’ve read very little music. A huge majority of my gigs are learned by ear. Listening to jazz and other music in a very focused way is necessary to my livelihood.<\/p>\n

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There are varying degrees of listening to music, but for the sake of this article, I’ll break it down into two categories: active listening and passive listening. Passive listening is what people do most of the time. They turn on some music while reading, doing homework, driving, working out, dancing, or maybe even writing a blog post. Passive listening takes no effort. It’s enjoyable. Listening to jazz and other music is supposed to be enjoyable. Music is entertainment. That’s its main purpose.<\/p>\n

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\"blockActive listening takes intense focus. It takes much more effort than passive listening, but is much more rewarding. It’s like the difference between leisure reading and studying for a test, or the difference between watching a blockbuster movie versus watching a documentary (not that documentaries aren’t enjoyable). The rest of this article will give tips and explain methods for getting better at active listening to jazz. Active listening can be trying to figure out the melody or chord changes to your favorite pop song, it can be trying to learn a drum part, or it can be transcribing a Clifford Brown solo. It’s even possible to listen to music actively without knowing much or anything about music. In a book I’m reading now, the author talks about transcribing lyrics to 80s hip hop (before you could find all the lyrics you would ever want on the internet).<\/p>\n

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Passive listening is for the layperson. Active listening is for the musician.<\/p>\n

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This article will cover various techniques and exercises to help you learn how to listen to jazz and other music more effectively.<\/p>\n

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Form<\/strong><\/h2>\n

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An essential part of active listening to jazz is being aware of musical form. Different genres of music have different forms, although there is definitely some overlap. In classical music, we learn about Sonata Form, Rondo Form, Minuet and Trio, Theme and Variations, etc. If you listen to pop<\/a> or rock music, there is usually a formula that goes something along the lines of: intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, chorus. Check out some of your favorite pop songs and see if you can hear this pattern. It makes learning music by ear a much simpler process.<\/p>\n

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Likewise, there are a handful of formulae used in traditional jazz. Modern jazz can be more complex, since there is a lot of crossover from other genres, and many compositions are through-composed. For the purpose of this article, I’ll focus on traditional jazz. There are a couple of different types of form to be aware of when listening to jazz. The melody of each jazz tune has a form. The following are some examples of common song forms and jazz tunes that employ them.<\/p>\n

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\"jazz<\/p>\n

Body and Soul, Don’t Get Around Much Anymore, Satin Doll, So What, Take the ‘A’ Train<\/p>\n

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All of Me, But Not for Me, I Got Rhythm, On Green Dolphin Street, There Will Never Be Another You<\/p>\n

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I’ll Remember April, Stablemates<\/p>\n

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Night and Day, Song for My Father<\/p>\n

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Billie’s Bounce, Blue Monk, Mr. PC, Now’s the Time, Straight No Chaser<\/p>\n

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These are a few of the most common song forms used in jazz, but there are plenty of other forms. Listen to a bunch of jazz tunes and try to decipher their song forms.<\/p>\n

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The melody of each tune has its own form, but jazz also has a larger form structure since improvisation is involved. Commonly in small group jazz (trio, quartet, quintet, etc.), the group plays the head (melody), then a few members of the group take turns soloing, and then they play the head again. The large form of a jazz performance could be something like: intro, head, trumpet solo, saxophone solo, piano solo, drum solo, head.<\/p>\n

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\"standard<\/p>\n

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Traditional big band jazz has a similar form, but may have some added elements, such as solis and shout choruses.<\/p>\n

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Motivic Material<\/strong><\/h2>\n

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When you\u2019re listening to jazz, being aware of the form provides a big picture understanding of the structure of a given tune.\u00a0 It’s a basic understanding of what you’re listening to, so the song doesn’t just sound like random noise (which is how music without words probably sounds to some people). Now it sounds like organized noise.<\/p>\n

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Beyond that, you can listen to each soloist individually to get some insight into how they think while improvising. As your knowledge of jazz theory and improvisation grows, you’ll be able to pick out and recognize more and more things in an improvised solo. Something you can listen for right away is motivic material and the development of this motivic material. We’ll look more at this later when I provide some examples.<\/p>\n

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Group Interaction<\/strong><\/h2>\n

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Something that is unique to improvised music is group interaction. When reading music from a page, there is little opportunity to be collectively creative as a group. Imagine a rock garage band \"jazzsituation. You’re figuring out what the rhythm guitar and bass player are going to play, what the lead guitarist is going to play during the intro and when and for how long he’s going to solo, how the drummer is going to lead from the verse into the chorus, what the background vocals are going to be, etc. In this situation, writing music is a collective effort. In improvised music, you’re simultaneously doing this as you’re performing for a crowd. Improvised music is spontaneous composition and performance.<\/p>\n

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As with listening to individual soloists, your understanding and recognition of how members of a group relate and react to one another will grow as your experience grows. There are certain simple things you can focus on when listening to jazz. The soloist can decide to increase the intensity of his or her solo in a bunch of different ways. Maybe he or she plays louder, plays more notes, plays higher notes, etc. These are a few simple ways to increase intensity. The band will hear his or her intention and react to it by getting louder with him or her, playing more densely, etc. Another way the band can react is by simply responding to the material the soloist puts out there. Maybe the soloist plays a phrase and then leaves a couple bars of rest. This could be an opportunity for the piano player to play a phrase in response to what the soloist just played. The more comfortable a group gets playing together, the more they will understand each other\u2019s preferences. That’s why groups that have been playing together for a long time sound so in sync with each other. Improvisation is musical conversation. For most people, conversations are usually more fluid with people you know well than with strangers.<\/p>\n

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Example – \u201cStrasbourg-St. Denis\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n

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Okay, now I’ll provide a concrete example to help you to understand the methods for listening to jazz detailed above. Take a listen to \u201cStrasbourg-St. Denis\u201d by the Roy Hargrove Quintet.<\/p>\n

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